General complaint thread

[Zekander]

I don't understand this. What does RUN and GEO have to do with the fact Blue Mage is a fighter/mage and an excellent job choice for someone who wants to play as a mage who melees?

RUN is an elemental tank. GEO, from all I have seen (which I admit isn't much) seems like a support-style black mage with aura-like abilities. So I don't see either of these as replacing Blue Mage as the ideal fighter/mage.

I mentioned RUN because we were talking about replacements for melee RDM, and RUN takes all of RDMs best melee capabilities (Enspells, Phalanx, Stoneskin, elemental resistance and barspells, even Fast Cast) and adds on an A+ rank in a DD weapon. So if you want to play RDM melee, RUN was specifically designed for you.

Yeah I just threw GEO in there for no real reason, but you could argue that GEO overshadows RDM support/nuking capabilities.

Mostly I don't play BLU out of personal preference, I don't like it's style and the monstrosity of it. I do like RDMs style of a spell wielding noble fencer, and I would like to see that style come through in the gameplay.

[Dale]

I mentioned RUN because we were talking about replacements for melee RDM, and RUN takes all of RDMs best melee capabilities (Enspells, Phalanx, Stoneskin, elemental resistance and barspells, even Fast Cast) and adds on an A+ rank in a DD weapon. So if you want to play RDM melee, RUN was specifically designed for you.

Yeah I just threw GEO in there for no real reason, but you could argue that GEO overshadows RDM support/nuking capabilities.

Mostly I don't play BLU out of personal preference, I don't like it's style and the monstrosity of it. I do like RDMs style of a spell wielding noble fencer, and I would like to see that style come through in the gameplay.

Yes but your issue with Red Mage seems to be a lack in melee damage. RUN is defensive by nature where as BLU is offensive by nature and very skilled with one-handed swords. So it would be the perfect fit for the style of play you are looking for. Because Red mage is not a high damage melee job. They are better described as a jack of all trades as one poster said and I feel that is an apt description.

So instead of asking for the developers to change the job to suit your own personal style and turn them into offensive swordsmen, wouldn't it be better to just play one of the jobs that actually do already give you the style of play you are looking for?

I'll admit Blue Mage is intimidating to level but I if you want to be a fighter/mage that does high damage it really is the way to go and would pay off big in the end for you. Because you are likely never to be satisfied as a Red Mage given your orientation toward being offensive with a sword.

Also, this game has enough damage dealing classes already. It doesn't need another in my opinion and I would hate to see Red Mage go down that path.

[Demonjustin]

Didn't you say earlier you easily cut though very/incredibly toughs with your Red Mage melee without using distract or any accuracy support trusts? Now suddenly you are saying we have accuracy issues? I have a hard time understanding your complaints.

I believe you're thinking of someone else. That said, I'll still address this since it does apply to me in some respect. All VT/IT are not equal. On RDM I am capable of beating down basically any mob in Dho Gates with fair amounts of ease, they are for all intents and purposes classified as IT mobs. I require no Trusts nor do I require Distract for me to cap accuracy on these mobs. That said, Woh Gates is quite the opposite. They have high enough EVA that I require Accuracy Songs at very least on top of Food in order to cap Accuracy, and I think I need more than that still. Mind you I'm running what used to be the best possible Accuracy set for a RDM and I'm not likely to be far off still so these mobs are quite the issue.

All of that said, this is also assuming normal mobs are the extent of what you wish to fight. With songs I am capable of capping Accuracy on Gessho, the second most evasive NM of the MPNMs so far as I'm aware. That is on Difficult however, put me on Very Difficult and even in my high Accuracy set with full buffs and constantly keeping up Distract II and you'd see my Accuracy still quite a bit away from cap. Put me against AAMR and you'd see it get even worse, as generally I don't cap Accuracy on her even on Difficult in my Accuracy gear. So, it truly depends on the extent of what you wish to fight. If the mobs of Dho Gates are your only interest then RDM has no deep Accuracy issues and as such is fine as is. If you wish to push the limits and fight the hardest, most evasive mobs in the game, using gear sets built specifically to excel at such... you're going to be disapointed, and a large source of our missing Accuracy comes in the form of gear(specifically legs, for which we have no good Accuracy piece...) and our skill rating being only a B, rather than B+~A.

Anyway: I do half way agree with you here (though your previous posts seem to conflict with your current one) that Red Mages have a disadvantage in terms of accuracy when compared to melee jobs due to our lower rank. Where we disagree is you see this as a problem and I don't really. Because in the end this job is - a support mage- and not a melee class. And if you gear appropriately and make the needed sacrifices it is possible to overcome our accuracy issues. So it's a problem you can easily solve.

Though I admittedly only read this after my last part of my reply, I believe my previous bit of this reply addresses this as well.

It appears you think we should have great shield skill too now as well. It seems you want everything. But we already have excellent defense potential so giving us a high shield skill would make us too powerful. That is an advantage Paladins have and need to keep.

I believe you misunderstand. I am not saying we should have great shield skill, but rather, we should have skill to use a shield. For simplicity sake, I'll use a graph to show what I mean.



This graph shows the skill at level 99 for every skill level and how it scales. As you can see, D, E, and F, are all far behind the others. The slope is insane at those levels, if you're in one of those 3 categories your skill is so far behind that to some extent you might as well not even have the skill at all. RDM is a F rank Shield user, our skill is literally 103 behind C-, which is the first reasonable amount of skill on the chart. I'm not asking for us to have A+ or even B, just C- alone would allow us to make use of our shield. Currently even with a Beatific Shield +1 which is our best option for shields, we have only 372 skill, just under a C rank level 99's skill. That's a 119 shield's skill added to our natural, that's to say at level 119 a RDM should be just barely able to block a good deal of attacks from level 99 targets. See what I mean about how bad that is? At least if we had a C- skill rank we'd end up with 475 skill with this shield, which would be far behind that of most jobs still, but enough we could at least use our 119 Shield on level 99(~105?) targets with some effect.

To be honest, the greatest impediment to Red Mage melee is not our accuracy. It's not our En Spells II. Nor is it our lower rank in sword. It is simply put that our role in combat is that of support - and that is where we are expected to perform to our fullest and at times melee can complicate our ability to do this. So how well we can melee depends almost entirely on the situation and how well balanced our current group is.

Part of what makes a Red Mage so powerful is it can adapt to pitch-hit for many different roles in a variety of different situations. And from what I have seen, they are better at this than any other job.

While this is true, the main thing I take issue with is our capability to fill a melee role. The one and only time you truly go into an event asking for someone to be ready to switch it up on notice is when you've never done said event before. It's extremely rare for me to go into an event as a supporter via healing, buffing, and enfeebling, and during said event be asked to change to a frontline fighter Hasting, healing, and keeping up basic enfeebles. Ignoring the fact I use completely different subjobs for each of these roles and the fact no subjob can fit both well at once, it's simply not common to need such things.

I accept and admit our role in combat even on the frontlines largely includes support. That said, I don't think that is an excuse to rip away power from the job that it needs in order to close the gap between it and other jobs. As I said before, if we had even 80% of the damage of other jobs in equal gear then that'd be one thing. The fact of the matter is that it's not really the case, and the gap we do have isn't one that Haste II & Distract II can make up for alone. They are our only true support aspects we can keep up easily on the frontlines without drastically hindering our damage to the point of making us even less powerful/desirable.

[Dale]

I believe you're thinking of someone else. That said, I'll still address this since it does apply to me in some respect. All VT/IT are not equal. On RDM I am capable of beating down basically any mob in Dho Gates with fair amounts of ease, they are for all intents and purposes classified as IT mobs. I require no Trusts nor do I require Distract for me to cap accuracy on these mobs. That said, Woh Gates is quite the opposite. They have high enough EVA that I require Accuracy Songs at very least on top of Food in order to cap Accuracy, and I think I need more than that still. Mind you I'm running what used to be the best possible Accuracy set for a RDM and I'm not likely to be far off still so these mobs are quite the issue.

All of that said, this is also assuming normal mobs are the extent of what you wish to fight. With songs I am capable of capping Accuracy on Gessho, the second most evasive NM of the MPNMs so far as I'm aware. That is on Difficult however, put me on Very Difficult and even in my high Accuracy set with full buffs and constantly keeping up Distract II and you'd see my Accuracy still quite a bit away from cap. Put me against AAMR and you'd see it get even worse, as generally I don't cap Accuracy on her even on Difficult in my Accuracy gear. So, it truly depends on the extent of what you wish to fight. If the mobs of Dho Gates are your only interest then RDM has no deep Accuracy issues and as such is fine as is. If you wish to push the limits and fight the hardest, most evasive mobs in the game, using gear sets built specifically to excel at such... you're going to be disapointed, and a large source of our missing Accuracy comes in the form of gear(specifically legs, for which we have no good Accuracy piece...) and our skill rating being only a B, rather than B+~A.

Though I admittedly only read this after my last part of my reply, I believe my previous bit of this reply addresses this as well.

I believe you misunderstand. I am not saying we should have great shield skill, but rather, we should have skill to use a shield. For simplicity sake, I'll use a graph to show what I mean.



This graph shows the skill at level 99 for every skill level and how it scales. As you can see, D, E, and F, are all far behind the others. The slope is insane at those levels, if you're in one of those 3 categories your skill is so far behind that to some extent you might as well not even have the skill at all. RDM is a F rank Shield user, our skill is literally 103 behind C-, which is the first reasonable amount of skill on the chart. I'm not asking for us to have A+ or even B, just C- alone would allow us to make use of our shield. Currently even with a Beatific Shield +1 which is our best option for shields, we have only 372 skill, just under a C rank level 99's skill. That's a 119 shield's skill added to our natural, that's to say at level 119 a RDM should be just barely able to block a good deal of attacks from level 99 targets. See what I mean about how bad that is? At least if we had a C- skill rank we'd end up with 475 skill with this shield, which would be far behind that of most jobs still, but enough we could at least use our 119 Shield on level 99(~105?) targets with some effect.

While this is true, the main thing I take issue with is our capability to fill a melee role. The one and only time you truly go into an event asking for someone to be ready to switch it up on notice is when you've never done said event before. It's extremely rare for me to go into an event as a supporter via healing, buffing, and enfeebling, and during said event be asked to change to a frontline fighter Hasting, healing, and keeping up basic enfeebles. Ignoring the fact I use completely different subjobs for each of these roles and the fact no subjob can fit both well at once, it's simply not common to need such things.

I accept and admit our role in combat even on the frontlines largely includes support. That said, I don't think that is an excuse to rip away power from the job that it needs in order to close the gap between it and other jobs. As I said before, if we had even 80% of the damage of other jobs in equal gear then that'd be one thing. The fact of the matter is that it's not really the case, and the gap we do have isn't one that Haste II & Distract II can make up for alone. They are our only true support aspects we can keep up easily on the frontlines without drastically hindering our damage to the point of making us even less powerful/desirable.

Wow what a post, complete with graphs and all. So since you took so much effort to write it I'll read it word for word and try to comment.

You admit you can cap your accuracy against even some of the highest evasive monsters in the entire game. So I don't see a real issue with Red Mage and our accuracy. Chances are if we are having trouble hitting something when we are decked out in accuracy gear other Melee are as well. Some monsters are just hard to hit.

If you want to give us a C in shield I got no real issues with that. Long as it stays far beneath the Paladin.

Where we disagree is you don't think a Red Mage can fill a melee role. And I do. Under normal situations I feel I compare quite well with the other melee in the group when I'm in full Melee mode. Yes, they will pull ahead of me when they self-chain and do massive burst damage or round up a lot of monsters and sweep them with a massive AoE weapon skill. But in normal situations Red Mage does just fine.

From what I read of your post - what you want to be able to do is 80% of the best damage in the game while still being able to play support and enhance your party and enfeeble your enemy. And I retain - as I have since the beginning of this debate - that would simply be too powerful. If you want to support your group - especially to the effective extent that a Red Mage can - you need to pay a heavy price in terms of your damage. Else actual melee damage dealing classes would become too weak by comparison. Because why bring a melee DPS if you can bring a Red mage who does only 20% less damage yet can heal, enfeeble and enhance the group so effectively?

I really do feel Red Mages who are dissatisfied with their melee damage should go try a Blue Mage out. That is a melee/mage job with an actual focus on offense. Because Red Mage is not designed to be an offensive job. They are a mixed bag of many different jobs and designed for players who want to do a little bit of everything. You are never going to be a pillar of offense. Nor should they be.

[Demonjustin]

RDM is the mash up Jack-of-all-Trades, many jobs can primarily be seen as a simple combo of two of it's aspects.

RDM's meleeing + RDM's buffing = BLU
RDM's meleeing + RDM's nuking = DRK
RDM's meleeing + RDM's tanking = RUN
RDM's healing + RDM's tanking = PLD
RDM's healing + RDM's nuking = SCH
RDM's buffing + RDM's enfeebling = GEO

I admit it's a rather simple way of looking at things, but I think it's fairly accurate. The three brought up right now are BLU, GEO, and RUN, each of which admittedly are viable alternatives to RDM provided you're ok with limiting yourself to such roles. If you primarily like RDM's meleeing power you're likely to find BLU and RUN interesting as they focus on that sort of melee power as well as one other massive aspect, and a few minor ones. For instance, a BLU can enfeeble or a RUN can buff, they just don't do it very well. I personally like RDM more than any of these alternatives.

[Protey]

I agree with demonjustin's request to raise RDM shield skill to C-. It's not a ridiculous request, it won't break anything. It will only allow us to have a somewhat decent rate of blocking on fodder mobs (except Woh gates... those guys are too high level). On NMs we still won't block anything.

It's kind of shameful that a whm has higher shield skill than we do.

[Dale]

I agree with demonjustin's request to raise RDM shield skill to C-. It's not a ridiculous request, it won't break anything. It will only allow us to have a somewhat decent rate of blocking on fodder mobs (except Woh gates... those guys are too high level). On NMs we still won't block anything.

It's kind of shameful that a whm has higher shield skill than we do.

I agree. A C- won't hurt anything. Though I don't really see a need for it. But I got no beef with giving us a C-. As long as they remain far behind Paladin.

[Malthar]

Same; I've always found RDM's shield skill kind off off-pudding. However, it should be raised more than a C-1, as Protey suggests, to at minimum a B-, and perhaps have a RDM specific shield that has an increased block rate.

[Metaking]

dont wanna get draged into this but one thing barrier tusk's effect is applied after pdt so if you are at 50% pdt its effect only goes past cap by 7.5%, and cocoon is a little op, i mean full pdt wars getting one shoted by merciless mauling but blus with coccon and 50% pdt barely dropping to yellow.

Ps. a blu inside incursion should never have mp problems ever before hitting 129 level

[Zekander]

I really don't want RDM to be a melee DD either, I too think even 80% of a high end DD would be too much. An A- in sword would no where near accomplish that. What I do want is for the general public to accept RDM melee as an acceptable option under certain circumstances, and I feel that an A- combat skill would help in that regard. You all agree that RDM can already melee competently, but unfortunately the vast majority of FFXI players do not believe so.